1. Technical Field
Various embodiments of the present invention relate to a semiconductor apparatus and related methods. In particular, certain embodiments relate to a signal processing technology of outputting reliable data fast.
2. Related Art
In a semiconductor apparatus, when a plurality of pieces of data output through pads PADs is simultaneously modified, that is, when the amount of data modified from a high level to a low level or from a low level to a high level is large, current consumption is increased, resulting in occurrence of noise.
In this regard, a data bus inversion (DBI) technology may be used to reduce the number of data to be modified. For example, assuming that an initial level of data is a high level, when 8-bit data is output, it is determined whether the number of data to be modified to a low level exceeds 4. If the number of data to be modified to the low level exceeds 4, the levels of all pieces of data are inverted. As a consequence, in the case of using the DBI technology, when outputting 8-bit data through pads PADs, the number of data modified from the high level to the low level does not exceed 4.
Meanwhile, it is possible to improve the reliability of transmitted data using a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) technology. In the CRC technology, while data is transmitted, a check value for checking whether an error has occurred in the data in transmission is additionally transmitted. That is, before transmitting data, a CRC value of the data to be transmitted is calculated, and the data and the CRC value are transmitted together. At this time, the data and the CRC value may be simultaneously transmitted, sequentially transmitted, or the CRC value may be included in a data packet for transmission.
Then, a data reception side may determine whether the transmitted data is intact based on the received data and the CRC value.
In the case of simultaneously applying the DBI technology and the CRC technology, the calculation of DBI is completed first, and then the CRC value is calculated using data to which the DBI has been applied. At this time, since a substantial amount of time for DBI and CRC calculation is required, data output time is delayed when continuously outputting data.